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They reached the first of the pyramids by mid-morning and her father was happier than she could recall him in months as he crouched at the rail making notes and exclaiming. ‘See? Dashur!’
Cleo found herself almost as excited. The pyramids had fascinated and awed her on their way south, now she stared again, entranced until Quin distracted her by ordering the two feluccas to come alongside each other and then jumping aboard her father’s boat.
‘What are you about, sir?’ Her father turned from his sketching and made a grab at his papers as Quin bundled those off the makeshift table into the nearest chest and began snapping the padlocks closed. ‘Stop that! I need my papers!’
‘They are safer locked up,’ Quin said as he hung the loop of cord with the keys around his neck and jumped back to Cleo’s boat. ‘Yalla! Yalla!’ he shouted to the steersmen, for all the world, she thought indignantly, as if they’d been camels.
But the men grinned and began to work the boats out into midstream. Whatever Quin was about, they were in on the secret.
‘Sakhara,’ her father said, still torn between indignation and his obsession with the monuments.
‘Never mind the pyramids,’ Cleo said. ‘We are going to run into the barges!’
She held on to the side, her heart in her mouth, but the boatmen handled the feluccas as if they were swallows, darting over the surface of the river, hawking for insects. The boats flashed between the lumbering barges with insolent ease, their sails full of wind, the current bearing them along.
On the barges men shouted. Cleo saw Laurent run to the side and wave his arms, his mouth moving, but his words were caught on the breeze and tossed away. And then they were through, past Tora, and ahead was Gizah and the great pyramids on their left and the city on the right.
Cleo ducked into the cabin and pulled on her habera and fastened the burko so the long strip of fabric fell from nose to knees. When she came out Quin was fastening a bundle of cloth to the mast. He dropped it when he saw her.
‘Get that off and put on European clothes.’
‘No, it is safer if—’
‘Do as I say or I will dress you myself.’ He turned and tugged on a rope and the cloth stirred and rose up the mast. The breeze caught it and it flapped open, a pattern of crosses, red and white on a blue ground. On the other felucca one of the men was hoisting an identical flag.
‘What are you doing?’ Cleo stopped, the burko in her hand, and stared at the crudely sewn design. ‘That’s the British union Flag.’
‘Do you want to be fired on by the British?’
She stared at the shore, at the unfamiliar red uniforms, the mass of men and camels and tents on the bank, the flags. ‘That is the British army?’
Quin pushed her towards the cabin. ‘Do as I say, get changed. I want them to see there is a European woman on board.’
‘But...the British? How did you know? Laurent didn’t.’
‘I have known all along,’ Quin said as he scanned the shore. ‘I landed with them in March.’
‘You knew? You betrayed us!’
‘How?’ he demanded, turning a bleak face to her. ‘You are English, your father is English. Why should you regard being brought out of hostile territory to our own army as betrayal?’
She realised she had no answer for that, other than the fact he had kept it secret. ‘But Laurent—’
‘Laurent is a soldier and this is war. Now, are you going to get changed or do I have to undress you?’
‘No!’ Cleo dived into the cabin and sat huddled on the bed, trying to make sense of it all. Why hadn’t Quin told her that the British were besieging Cairo? And then his words struck her. Our own army. He was not American. He was British and he had lied to her from the start.
She dragged off the tob sebleh and lifted the hangings to give herself enough light to find the creased muslin gown and lawn petticoats that she had not worn since her wedding day. She dressed, her fingers clumsy on the unfamiliar tapes and seams, then strapped her little knife in its sheath around her leg, just below the knee. It felt strange to wear such thin clothes and to have her hair uncovered, but she resisted the instinct to put on a robe or a scarf. She did not want to give Quin any excuse to touch her and perhaps discover the knife.
They were almost past the wharfs of Cairo when she came back on deck, but the soldiers were still lining the banks. Behind them there was a sudden burst of gunfire.
‘Laurent!’ She craned to see, but Quin pulled her back and swung up on the gunwale.
‘Damn fool.’ He shaded his eyes. ‘He can’t hope to turn those barges or run the gauntlet of so many troops. Ah, now he has seen sense, they’re surrendering, someone’s hoisted a shirt.’
